Interaction With Small Mobile Devices

What is the best way to access information via mobile devices like cell phones?

There are many answers to that question. When it comes down to it, I think the main problem is user interaction. What is the best way of getting the information to the user in the format they want it and can handle it. Out of all the senses, the only ones that make sense for retrieving information are sight and hearing. So, you could have voice which speaks the information, text describing the information, or possibly more visual information such as maps, diagrams, or charts.

The other problem is trying to get the right queries from the user into the phone. That can be tricky with such a small screen. Hopefully voice recognition will be good enough to work on small mobile devices. That seems to be the main way of getting a query to whatever service you are accessing. After that, maybe some sort of intellegent menu system. I know this has already been done with many hotlines where you listen to a menu and select the correct choice… but wouldn’t this be a ton faster if this was a text menu instead of listening to a voice read you the menu?

Here are some of the main technologies I’ve seen that might have a chance in the next generation of user interaction on small mobile devices: